The Future of Islamic Studies: Tawḥīd, Knowledge, and Civilizational Foresight in Indonesian Islamic Higher Education

Abstract

What should Islamic knowledge become in an age shaped by artificial intelligence, digital culture, planetary crises, and an intensifying global struggle over who defines knowledge itself? This book argues that the central challenge facing contemporary Islamic thought is no longer simply how to preserve tradition or respond to modernity. The deeper task is to recover the capacity to produce knowledge, shape institutions, engage technology ethically, and imagine alternative futures. Beginning with the transformation of Islamic higher education in Indonesia, Kamaruzzaman Bustamam Ahmad develops a far-reaching framework for reconnecting revelation, reason, and reality through a Tauhidic paradigm of knowledge. He examines the fragmentation of modern knowledge, the relationship between science and spirituality, the future of Islamic universities, digital culture and Generation Z, the intellectual resources of Nusantara, and the possibility of positioning the Global South as a producer rather than merely a consumer of theory. At the heart of the book is the idea of Predictive Knowledge: a future-oriented approach to scholarship that connects intellectual inquiry with moral foresight and civilizational responsibility. Written for readers of Islamic thought, philosophy of knowledge, religion and science, higher education, technology and ethics, Global South studies, and futures studies, this book offers a provocative roadmap for moving Islamic scholarship from intellectual reaction toward knowledge creation and civilizational agency.